Africa's most populous country, Nigeria, is home to over 250 ethnic groups that speak over 500 languages. These tribes and tongues also serve different deities through different traditional religious approaches.

However, only two religions are recognised nationally - Christianity and Islam. While Islam dominates up north, Christianity is the primary religion down south. The southwest region, the home of the Yoruba tribe, boasts the highest number of Muslims in the south. Interestingly, the conduct of Yoruba Muslims in their practice of Islam bears envying as it varies significantly from the ways of some Muslims in the north.

Yoruba Muslims are the most peaceful, tolerant, and accommodating.

In a typical Yoruba family, the man could be a Muslim, and his wife a Christian, with the children deciding on their own whether to be Muslim, Christian or even something else. Nobody tries to force anybody to join them in their religion.

This tolerance is extended to non-family members of different religions. So hardly one hears that there is a fight over religion among the Yorubas. The few times violence happened in the southwest over religion, it was caused by non-Yorubas from the north or other parts of the country.

Compared to Muslims up north, it remains taboo for a Muslim man, especially in the core northern states, to marry a Christian woman or for a Christian woman to marry a Muslim man. And northern Muslim parents hardly permit their children to choose their religion. In fact, there are numerous cases where northern Muslim parents disown their children for daring to choose a religion other than their parents'. In extreme cases, parents had sought to violently attack their children who chose the other religion.

This is why most religious violence in Nigeria happens in the north. From Kano to Sokoto to Kebbi to Borno to Kaduna to Plateau, over 5000 people have been killed during religious riots in those states in the last 20 years.

So why are Yoruba Muslims different?

The Yorubas are known for respect; they are so respectful that younger Yorubas prostrate to greet elders. But they are also arguably the most educated tribe in Nigeria - thanks to the foundation of education built by Obafemi Awolowo, the premier of the precolonial southwest region.
With most Yoruba youths educated (up to the university level), they tend to think deeply before acting on some instructions. So an educated Yoruba Muslim youth is consumed with thoughts of pursuing his career, climbing to the top and being useful to himself and society, as against getting radical and fighting with people of other religions.

He is also unlikely to be manipulated by his religious leaders to hate or attack a Christian with a weapon and with the intention to kill.
The high tolerance level of the Yorubas is why the southwest is the convergence point of people of different religions and tribes in Nigeria for business. Think why Lagos is the commercial centre of Nigeria and why it will always be.

Compared with the situation up north; there, most youths are uneducated, and northern political leaders, who had been ruling Nigeria since 1966, bear the blame for not fixing the educational gap in the north.

With the low level of education translating into high-level poverty, a northern Muslim youth is more likely to fall into the trap of politicians who often try to weaponise religion for political gains while handing little cash to unemployed youth for fighting.

An uneducated youth is also likely to be manipulated by a religious leader to pick a weapon, fight somebody of another faith, or even get radicalised.

This is not to say that every Muslim in the north is not peaceful. No! In fact, some northern Muslims are so peaceful that they protect strangers and people of other faiths from harm.

To solve the problem of religious intolerance in the north, the government must invest massively to educate northern youths and empower them economically because if educated and gainfully employed, they would be unlikely to be manipulated.

The government must also be serious in prosecuting people who instigate religious violence in Nigeria. In states like Kaduna and Plateau, violence continues because influential people in the government shield perpetrators and prevent justice.

And the time to act is NOW!!!

https://www./why-nigerias-yoruba-muslims-super-peaceful-innocent-eteng/

RemoveEbola:
Lol, glorification of cowardice. There is a huge difference between subservience and tolerance. You're not even allowed to sight moon, break fast or preside as chief imam in big mosques across the North .

When kafirs are killed during religious riots in the North, you guys will run to the nearest barracks alongside Christians

No Muslim group anywhere in the world will pray for lesbians, gays and cross dressers the way Yoruba "Muslims" prayed for Bobrisky. No wonder they don't rate you guys in Islam

Zandena:
I wasted my precious time to read the hogwash you put up!
Christians really have phobia for the Northern Muslims because all their evil evangelism have yielded no success the way it has succeeded with the Yoruba Muslims and Edo Muslims, hence their incessant attacks and name calling of northern Muslims.
If what you postulated of Yoruba Muslims' marrying Christian wives qualified them as tolerant, why are Yoruba Christian men vehemently opposed to marrying a Muslim wives? Does that qualify Yoruba Christians as intolerant and fanatical?
Islam allows a Muslim man to marry a chaste woman among Jews, Christians and other people of scriptures, however it did not allow their offsprings to follow other religions except Islam, this unlike the Yoruba Muslims are practicing today where they watched their children becoming Christians in the name of marriage. This is why the Christians in SW always dominate their Muslim counterparts and hence reducing number of Muslims there.
This is purely backstabbing and betrayal of Islam and its sacredness.
A former king of Saudi Arabia has ever married a Christian woman and non of their children has denounced Islam, this shows the essence of such union as not to procreate children that will practice idolatry religion like christianity!
So the flexibility of allowing Muslim men to marry chaste Christian women is being misappllied and misused by most Yorubas which their Christian counterparts now used to boost their numbers and dominance, hence called it tolerance!